Sustainable Mobility

Technical and environmental challenges for the automotive sector

Week 3 Session 1 Engine Efficiency

Maria Thirouard

IFPEN / IFP School 2014

In the previous week we saw how fuels are produced and how they are refined. We also saw the
technical differences between gasoline and diesel fuels, but also the differences between gasoline
and diesel engines. We talked about the main principle and the key elements of a 4-stroke engine.
We will here focus on the engine itself.
When describing an engine, the main parameters are: the fuel consumption or its overall efficiency
and also the power and torque, and pollutant emissions.

Engine Thermodynamics

We need to go a little more deeply into the thermodynamic cycle of a 4-stroke engine in order to
better understand where the energy is being used. So, first question, what is a thermodynamic
cycle?
The formal definition says that a thermodynamic cycle is a sequence of thermodynamic processes
that involve transfer of heat and work into and out of a system, while varying pressure,
temperature, and other variables within the system.
Here you can see some familiar examples.

The ideal thermodynamic cycle of a 4 stroke engine is called the Otto cycle. The cycle is represented
in a graph of pressure against volume, where the pressure represented is the pressure inside the
combustion chamber, or what we call the in-cylinder pressure, and the volume is the volume swept
by the piston. Please remember that the Otto cycle is an ideal cycle.

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You will see that each process can be related to each stroke of the engine.

In process 0 to 1 a mass of air is drawn into the cylinder at constant pressure. This corresponds to
the intake stroke.
Process 1 to 2 is an isentropic and adiabatic compression of the air as the piston moves from
bottom dead center to top dead center. This is the compression stroke.
Process 2 to 3 is a constant volume heat transfer to the working gas from an external source while
the piston is at top dead center. This process is in fact the instantaneous combustion of the fuel.
Process 3 to 4 is as isentropic expansion, which together with the combustion process, corresponds
to the power stroke.
Process 4-1 completes the cycle by a constant volume process in which heat is rejected from the air
while the piston is at bottom dead center.
Finally, in process 1 to 0 the mass of air is released into the atmosphere in a constant pressure
process. This is the exhaust stroke.
The efficiency of this ideal Otto cycle, or thermodynamic efficiency, is the maximal possible
efficiency that we can get out of an engine. The equation for the thermodynamic efficiency of an
Otto cycle is defined as: One minus one over the compression ratio to gamma minus one where
gamma is the specific heat ratio of the gas Cp over Cv (Cp/Cv):

From this equation you can see that the engines thermodynamic efficiency depends directly upon
the Compression Ratio: increasing the compression ratio will improve the thermodynamic
efficiency.

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Engine Efficiency

Now that we are talking about efficiency, we will go deeper into this concept. In simple terms,
efficiency is a matter of how much energy we can use compared to how much energy we need to
put in our machine. In other words, the overall efficiency is the ratio between the amount of useful
mechanical energy available to power the car compared to the amount of chemical energy
introduced into the engine through the fuel.

Do you know roughly what is the engines overall efficiency? We will discover this in a few minutes.
You all remember that in the engine, the fuels chemical energy is converted into mechanical
energy to power the car. The chemical energy available in the fuel can be calculated if we know the
Low Heating Value of the fuel. The fuels chemical energy or the amount of energy that we
introduce is calculated by multiplying the mass of fuel that goes into the engine by the Low Heating
Value. (Q fuel = M fuel *LHV)

However, not all the energy available in the fuel is converted into useful mechanical energy to
power the car. As you can imagine, there are several energy losses to take into account. But where
does the energy go?

Our starting point will be the fuel's chemical energy. The fuel burns inside the combustion chamber.
Most of the time, and for different reasons, combustion is not complete. There is always some
unburned fuel remaining at the end of combustion. This fuel goes directly to the exhaust pipe and
its energy is lost. Of course we try to optimize all engine parameters so that the amount of

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unburned fuel is very low. Still, in the best case, around 1 or 2% of the fuel is wasted due to
incomplete combustion, and sometimes even more.
Once the fuel burns, the heat produced by combustion is used in the engine thermodynamic cycle
to produce power. The thermodynamic efficiency must be taken into account now. The
thermodynamic efficiency, as we have seen, depends on the compression ratio. Roughly, we can
say that around 35 to 40% of the energy is wasted when the fuel is used during an ideal engine's
thermodynamic cycle.
But, this is the efficiency of an ideal engine cycle. You can well imagine that our engine is not an
ideal machine, so it is impossible to make it work at an ideal efficiency. In real engines, the
admission and exhaust phases are not instantaneous or at constant volume. There are heat losses
in every stroke. Combustion is neither instantaneous nor isochoric. All these points are sources of
energy losses that reduce the efficiency of the engine when going from the ideal cycle to the real
cycle. Around 20% of the energy is lost here.
Finally, we have the mechanical losses. This includes all the energy dissipated in friction between all
mechanical parts and all the energy needed to drive the accessories of the engines. Mechanical
losses count for around 5% of the total energy.
After all the losses are computed, engines have a fairly low global efficiency. Indeed, the global
efficiency can be as high as 35% in optimal operating conditions, 40% in the very best cases. Can
you imagine? In the best case, only 35% of the energy in the fuel is used to drive the car and the
remaining 65% is lost.

In the worst case, which is the case when your engine is running but the car is not moving, like
when you are stopped at a red light, well then, all the energy supplied by the fuel is used to
overcome all the energy losses. So the overall efficiency is 0.
Most of the time, the engines efficiency is constantly changing from 0 to up to 35%.

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Increasing the efficiency of engines is a key issue in present times. Almost all engineers working in
engines are trying to develop more efficient engines. This is quite a challenge not only regarding the
economic context, with oil prices continuously increasing, but also regarding the environmental
context and global warming. Increasing the efficiency means that for a given target in terms of
power or torque we try to reduce the amount of fuel needed to produce it or the fuel consumption.
You know now that CO 2 is one of the products of combustion and that any time a fuel is burned,
CO 2 is produced. Well, increasing the overall efficiency reduces the fuel consumption and
therefore, the CO2 emissions.

Gasoline and diesel differences in efficiency

Lets try to see now the differences in terms of efficiency between gasoline and diesel engines. Lets
see first the differences in terms of thermodynamic efficiency.
We saw earlier that in diesel engines it is the temperature of highly compressed air that is
sufficient to initiate combustion. To ensure these conditions of high pressure and high temperature,
diesel engines work at a higher compression ratio compared to gasoline engines, where combustion
is initiated by a spark plug. The compression ratio of diesel engines nowadays is around 16 to 18,
whereas, the compression ratio in gasoline engines is around 9 to 12.
Additionally, in diesel engines, only air is compressed during the compression stroke whereas in
gasoline engines it is the fuel/air mixture that is compressed. The value of gamma is therefore
lower in gasoline engines compared to diesel.

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A natural consequence is a higher thermodynamic efficiency in diesel engines. You can see this by
looking at this graph: first because the compression ratio is higher and second because the gamma
of the gases during compression is also higher.

The main efficiency difference between diesel and gasoline engines is found in the cycle efficiency.
Indeed, gasoline engines often work at atmospheric pressure and there is a throttle to control the
intake air. The throttle induces a significant pressure drop during the intake stroke resulting in a
significant loss of efficiency.
Finally, due to a higher compression ratio, the peak in cylinder pressure in diesel engines is higher
than in gasoline engines. So, diesel engines need to be heavier and mechanical friction losses are
higher.
Overall, diesel engines have a better efficiency than gasoline engines, which is the main reason why
heavy duty vehicules all over the world are powered by diesel engines. The counterpart is that
diesel engines are heavier and more expensive. Indeed not only do they need to be more robust to
resist higher levels of pressure and temperature, but also their aftertreatement devices are more
complex and expensive.

Power and Torque

We will end this section by discussing power and torque. Power is the energy produced per unit
time and its directly related to the maximum achievable car speed. Torque is the tendency of a
force to rotate an object about an axis. The torque produced by the engine is responsible for the
tangential force at the wheel that makes the tires rotate. The total available torque at the wheels
depends on the engine torque and the transmission ratio. Consequently, for a given gear ratio, the
engine torque at the wheels is directly related to the vehicles acceleration capacity and therefore,
to the pleasure of driving. We will discuss further the gear box in the next video.
Torque and power are the key performances of the engine from the drivers perspective. Torque
and power vary with the engine speed. Both concepts are related: the power output of the engine
is expressed as its torque multiplied by the rotational speed of the engine. In this graph you can see
an example of what we call the full load curve, which is power and torque against engine speed, for
a gasoline engine. If we focus on torque, maximum torque is usually reached between 1500 and
3000 rpm. Due to higher supercharging pressures, at equal engine displacement, diesel engines
tend to have higher maximum torque than gasoline engines. If we focus on power, maximum
power is usually reached at the maximum engine speed in gasoline engines, and between 3000 and

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4000 rpm for diesel engines. Due to the combustion process and for other reasons, gasoline
engines are able to run at a higher engine speed, which is favorable for maximum power.

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